I agree with him that Arsenal will always be priced out by the big players. Back when Arsenal bought players for 15 mil, the big spenders shelled out 55 mil. Now the club could spend 55 mil, the ceiling has risen to 100 mil +.

Ousmane Dembele is a near world-class attacking midfielder already. In this crazy market Barca have paid good money, but they’re getting a top-class young talent. At 20, I think he could be Iniesta-like for Barca and serve them for a long long time. If he keeps his head down and stays injury free he’ll make the transfer fee look completely worth it.

I think a lot of people (me included a couple of days ago) forget about the player himself when it comes to the price of Dembele.
Was he really expensive? Of course.
Compared to his talent? I think: probably – but absolutely not as much as it seems, because to be honest:
As far as talent itself concern – I think he is on par (at least) with Pogba or Dybala.

For example:
He was among the top 10 player in Ligue1 when he was 18
and last year he was also among the top 10 in Bundesliga (at 19)

If Lukaku, Morata (who are 4-5 years older) worth 70-80 Million then is it really that astronomical a fee?

Look at Lemar, He was priced allegedly around 60M at the beginning of the summer? Based off of what? Most said go ahead pay it because in next year he is going to cost 80M lol His cost went past that in 2 months time lol Its stupid money right now based off of nothing lol

Based on what people will pay. Competition is fiercer than ever and that’s driving up prices. Hard to really relate to any top team when they are mostly high priced mercenaries, some Arsenal players included. That’s why I loved project youth, and they were more fun to watch than the current bunch.

Also consider that clubs are earning more money in TV deals, even if they have a relatively poor (by their own standards) season, which you can say we did, yet received a bucket load of cash in the process.

Smaller clubs are also receiving large sums of money, so they are then shelling out what used to be top prices for average players, remember it was not long ago when we all balked at the fee Liverpool paid for Andy Carroll only to sell him 2 years later at a loss.

The fees paid for Dembele, Neymar, Mbappe are over the top, even £90m for Lemar is crazy money – but given the prices paid for the other 3 is probably correct if you were to normalise the fees to a more reasonable level.

I feel that we, Arsenal, will be behind this trajectory of transfer fees for a very long time. And while it looked like we were prepared to spend £90m on Lemar, I can’t see us in the next window considering an offer of £150m+.

All of this makes the acquisition of Lacazette at ~£46m look very good. But in terms of quality, is he a third of a Dembele or a quarter of a Neymar? I think not.

Undoubtedly laughing all the way to the bank. Although when they signed him for £15m, I doubt they were looking at ten years service and were probably even then looking at a handsome profit one day. They certainly exploited the Neymar situation to get such a fee.

Doff the cap instead of showing a hint of jealousy Arsene. Our inificiancy to get top quality players nailed down to long term contracts is appalling and has been for a very long time. Just the same old excuses seem to pour out after every poor transfer window.

And we should have spent it early and replaced sanchez and ozil.
To replace them next season is just not realistic at this club with the prices the way they are.
To buy the quality of sanchez will cost far more than we will be willing to spend.
Poor business from arsenal in all aspects.

Nobody wanted Sanchez, except Citeh, and nobody wanted Ozil. At all…I know everyone want AWs head, & the performance at Anfield was a shambles, but can we stop laying the blame for our transfer behaviour totally at his door?

Ivan & Stan are just as much to blame, if not more in my opinion for the way we do business. The way Gazidis compared us to Leicester the other day should be a sackable offence.
For me, this is the biggest issue for the football club, as those two goons will still be here after AW departs. (And before people get too irate at me, I thought AW should never have been offered another deal, & should have been allowed to leave on a high after beating CFC.) But that’s AFC under Ivan & Stan. I fear we’d better get used to it

agree its not all wengers fault, the team have huge issues in terms of formation, motivation etc that are purely down to him but that aside the lead should come from higher up in terms of transfers etc on that i agree.
but if arsene is not happy with his lot and with the board he should resign and explain this to the fans, except he doesn’t he praises stan to the hilt and does his bidding for him, so at the very least he is complicit in whats going on at the club.

Anyone who think she N’zonzi isn’t going good enough needs to watch him in action and not just write him off because he used to play for Stoke. This guy would be a huge upgrade on our CM’s. Tall, strong and a great passer with excellent positional discipline. Xhaka is a great passer but none of our current CM’s offer any of his other qualities.

Sanchez cost Ajax bout £7million though and went for £35million, he had just won the Copa America and is an defender. Thats different then being bought for less then £500k and sell at Citi money (£50million+), and that for a fuckin goalie 😒 it’s mental!

Like Tupac said, ‘that’s just the way it it is, things will never be the same. I see no changes, I wake up in the morning and I ask myself…is Arsenal worth following or should I free myself?’

Well, something like that anyway 🤔 And this Dembele fella, he can ball man, potentially better then Neymar no doubt…potentially!

Just keep moaning Arsene, as they say if you want it that bad you go and get it! You obviously don’t want it and have no ambition to compete with the other top clubs. You need a big kick up the arsene off that sofa, you old cabbage!

This site is now just full of low-grade morons, like you. (OK, there are some good voices/people, but they’ve been drowned out). There’s no solidarity, no wit, no nuance, just whining Invincibles bandwagoners, bored FIFA-rettes, and serial groundhog moaners.

I’m out. Yeah, yeah, big loss, I know, but I’d rather wallow in my AFC misery alone/sans cyber-gaff than have to read the sheer amount of ignorant, vile garbage that fills the pages here lately.

Would love to know what blogs thinks about this, has traffic to the sight increased in the last 18 months? Or have the people already here just become more apathetic and anti wenger? I’d put myself in the latter of the two options but it would be interesting to know

I used to to avoid watching his pressers and interviews because the combination of his excuses, his voice, and his unkept promises was enough to make my sick. Now I can’t even read his quotes anymore because I hear his voice as I read, and combined with the excuses and unkept promises I once again am sick.

The wengerin brigade? Do you know how twatish that sounds? There are still people trying to make the best of a situation, who refuse to use every fucking article as an excuse for a bit more Wenger bashing. I’d take blind optimism over consistent fucking whinging any day of the week.

also well said danny
im leaving now cause im fed up of all this nonsense
its the owner we need out
yesterday…or yesteryear
failing that get behind the club, the team and the manager-a man that bleeds arsenal and is probably our greatest

God, What a dinosaur…
The biggest “disconnected from reality and the truth” person in today’s football is Arsene himself.
The market has changed – There are bigger players and whole lot more money coming in then before, club’s are still spending the same percentage of their income to buy players since the early days of the PL, it’s just you who thinks that the market is ‘Crazy’ and ‘disconnected from reality’, you can sit all day blabbering about things that just don’t work in real life (aka FFP), or you can just play the game the way it is today – by paying what other clubs demands, not what you believe to be ‘True’.

I think the truth is arsenal can not compete in today’s market. The caliber of players we all expect to buy go for crazy money the club simply can’t afford. The oil sheikh clubs can afford to pay neymar/dembele money from their owners pocket and not necessarily from the clubs generated income. It is clear arsenal does not run along those lines and the owner will not put his personal money to fund transfers. Am pretty sure AW will like to buy those players but simply cant compete..The agitations should be directed upstairs

AW is in the pocket of Kronke. That’s why he got offered an extension. I agree it’s tough for us to compete with Citeh and PSG, but with the most expensive seats in football and the legacy we had 5 years ago, we should be closer to competing with the 5 clubs above us in EPL in terms of transfers and performance. But Wenger is so past his sell by date, we have no chance on or off the field. Conte, Poch, Pep, Klopp, that guy at Swansea, etc etc could all do so much better in the transfer market (with the help of a dir football) and so so much better on the field. The END just can’t come soon enough for me.

Who cares about the price of admission. Even if its the highest that doesn’t mean it its double what the next highest price is. Chelsea, City and to a certain extent Man U have deeper pockets. They will always spend more on transfers and wages.

It’s one of the factors that influences the fan dissatisfaction, that’s why it’s relevant. The club sold the move to Emirates and the following lean years as a necessary step to keep us as a top club. If fact, further than that, to compete with the top clubs in Europe. I still believe in that vision. That was the expectation set. We have a CLUB that is tee’d up for that. Great legacy, great fan base, great location in London, playing in great league, high capacity stadium. What we lack is the ownership, back office leadership, management and coaching to fulfill that vision. Once we get Wenger out, we have a hope of moving in that direction again. Would love Kronke and Gazidis out too.

The fan dissatisfaction comes largely from the fact AW had so much success early in career with Arsenal when it was basically ManU and Arsenal battling for the PL. Our expectations are high but it doesn’t match up with what the league is today. Obviously I get it that the prices to go to the games doesn’t help when the club is “struggling” to compete with the big 6.

I guess it depends on how you feel about what the club should spend on transfers and wages. If it was a true self sustaining model that we use I hope everything we can put into transfers and wages is being done. We can have the best manager and DoF in place and perfect the business model but It won’t help when clubs like ManC and Chelsea will spend beyond its means for trophies.

The same could be said for Thomas Lemar. Who 15 months ago would have paid more than £18m for him? And now both Arsenal and Liverpool had offered Monaco £90m. 500% increase? No matter how well you work on a football pitch…

Bizarre as Wenger usually signs players for about market price if not much less does he not? A few players in the top 25 most expensive arrivals flopped but just about all of them looked like good value for money at the time of purchase.

I have no complaints about the fees for the top 5 given how things are. Especially the £47m for Lacazette during a summer where Griezmann, a player who is no better, was preparing to be sold for double that.

Wonder if it was the inflation that forced his hand that deep into his pocket.

His excuses are poorly thought out because letting your most valued assets get to the final year of their contracts is the reason he’s in this mess, not an inflationary market.

It’s not common sense as it’s happened time and again to us before, he too can take advantage of an inflationary market, the team is in utter disarray and what’s left of it is set to be torn apart next summer.

The contracts situation is evidence that the Arsenal business model is failing- the head coach should not be blamed for contracts running down on players he wants to keep. As I understand it though within our model this is in fact Wengers responsibility. If we had the right structures in place with the right people and he could delegate this work we wouldn’t be in this mess. I think it’s likely that our defeat at Liverpool was probably due to a lack of preparation as Wenger was so tied up with player transfers. He has too many responsibilities at Arsenal and that is the issue for me, not his coaching ability.

They said Wenger is a genius along that his mastery of French football. But can u all notice how many talents sold from French league Dembele, Aubamenyang , Kante etc and not one of them went to Arsenal. Don’t understand why Wenger didn’t buy a cdm even when William Cavarlho was available and holding talks with West Ham.

I feel that the English press should be embarrassed at how different he is when giving information and opinion to overseas media. He’s been here 21 years and should be treated better but he’s still guarded. I agree with him saying the market is unsustainable but I don’t agree that he should use Arsenal as the lone standard bearer of economic decency. What was the point in keeping our powder dry when everyone is going powder crazy? (This is not a cocaine analogy)

AW has now become a “Jack of all trades”, master of none. We Arsenal fans DO NOT care about the 107 players in the England with contracts running down, we care about Arsenal players and what the Arsenal board(Wenger) will do about them.

Quit quoting stats about that rest of the league/world! Give us back our Arsenal. FOH with these bullshit stats. Mans are bored!

What he says here is absolutely correct of course, but it is what it is unless you want to actually do something about it. For better or worse football has gone down the market economy route and Wenger has ridden the bubble as well as anyone and he’s done very well out of it in the process. I don’t hear him moaning about how managers’ salaries have increased or campaigning for reductions – he has done as much as anyone else to encourage that trend. It’s like being the Chief Executive of a train company but moaning about inflation in rail fares. If he cares so much about it, perhaps he can sacrifice part of what is the biggest salary at the club to ensure that we can better compete?

Pre planning Arsene, you’ve had years of last minute transfer panic to learn the lesson!
Shame he wasn’t asked why he insists in playing so many of his players out of position and why his midfield think its a great idea to both go charging into the oppositions box

He says it’ll cost £70mill to replace Alexis next season.
Maybe we wouldn’t need to replace Alexis next season if we’d spent that £70mill on improving aspects of our squad for this season.
I refuse to believe this guy has a legitimate PHD in economics.
He doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of supply and demand.
I love Arsene but he drives me up the wall

Because Wenger took the job, Wenger manages all off the field and on field decisions, Wenger fucked up the transfer business in and out, and Wenger fucked up the first three games (yes, Leicester was a fuck up). That’s why we all blame Wenger. Agree tho’ that Kronke and Gazidis are also at considerable fault.

I like the fact that Wenger/Arsenal have been openly talking about the transfer goings on and stuff, but I would really, really, really like him to explain that Liverpool lineup and the reasons behind it???

Preferred the simular picture of AW from a couple of days ago, where I could either pretend he was doing an “oh snap!” Or “Booyah!” guesture with his hand. Either that, or he was possibly playing “rock, paper, scissors”…which would seem to be how he & Glazidis conduct their transfer business.

Just because something doesnt make sense, doesnt mean it isnt reality. Top viewpoint as always, but it seems wenger needs to educate the board yet again.

They bought in a new negotiator and still nothing has changed. Wenger has a signed many top players before this board came in, for large fees, but since Kroenke it’s been pretty consistent on the badly managed contracts side of things.

True, we can’t compete with the likes of Barcelona on Dembele prices but I think if we’re clever we could have significantly imporved the team this year at a far lower price. A few examples:
Right back: Aurier is a definite improvement on Debuchy (and enough quality to keep Bellerin on his toes) and moved for £23m to Spurs
Defensive Midfield: Krychowiak moved on loan to West Brom, N’zonzi has a £35m release clause. Both upgrades on Coq/Elneny
Central Midfield: Renato Sanches moved on loan to Swansea, Serri available for £35m due to his release clause.
The problem isn’t our finances because Juventus, Dortmund, even Bayern Munich don’t spend huge amounts to compete. Our problem is we seem to be a step behind on every deal in the transfer market and have a problem identifying targets

This is what Wenger should have worked with now, analysing and explaining the ways of the football world. The fact he so often drifts off to the bigger picture when asked to explain arsenal specific struggles is a very clear sign off how he perceives himself. He is not a manager that is obsessed with fine tuning himself in anyway required to secure success, he is a missionary, his cause is “on a higher scale than short term success” buying ever more time for his ways of things to turn into gold. All these stats about 100+ players being out of contract soon is not only deliberate camouflage, I have no doubt he tells himself that not having key players tied contractually is not his bad, it is the way of the world that is wrong.